Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 97 views

    A Poison Tree: Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Mariyam Nisar
    The poem describes how expressing anger towards a friend resolved it, while harboring anger towards a foe allowed it to grow. The speaker secretly nurtured their wrath, which grew into a poisonous tree bearing bright fruit. The foe ate the fruit not knowing it was poisoned and died under the tree, leaving the speaker glad. The moral is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous, though some see the poem as condoning taking vengeance through secret means.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    A Poison Tree: Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Mariyam Nisar
    97 views2 pages
    The poem describes how expressing anger towards a friend resolved it, while harboring anger towards a foe allowed it to grow. The speaker secretly nurtured their wrath, which grew into a poisonous tree bearing bright fruit. The foe ate the fruit not knowing it was poisoned and died under the tree, leaving the speaker glad. The moral is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous, though some see the poem as condoning taking vengeance through secret means.

    Original Description:

    Analysis of A Poison Tree by William Blake

    Original Title

    A Poison Tree

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The poem describes how expressing anger towards a friend resolved it, while harboring anger towards a foe allowed it to grow. The speaker secretly nurtured their wrath, which grew into a poisonous tree bearing bright fruit. The foe ate the fruit not knowing it was poisoned and died under the tree, leaving the speaker glad. The moral is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous, though some see the poem as condoning taking vengeance through secret means.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    97 views2 pages

    A Poison Tree: Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Mariyam Nisar
    The poem describes how expressing anger towards a friend resolved it, while harboring anger towards a foe allowed it to grow. The speaker secretly nurtured their wrath, which grew into a poisonous tree bearing bright fruit. The foe ate the fruit not knowing it was poisoned and died under the tree, leaving the speaker glad. The moral is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous, though some see the poem as condoning taking vengeance through secret means.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 2

    A POISON TREE

    I was angry with my friend;


    I told my wrath; my wrath did end.
    I was angry with my foe:
    I told it not, my wrath did grow.

    And I waterd it in fears,


    Night & morning with my tears:
    And I sunned it with smiles,
    And with soft deceitful wiles.

    And it grew both day and night.


    Till it bore an apple bright.
    And my foe beheld it shine,
    And he knew that it was mine.

    And into my garden stole,


    When the night had veild the pole;
    In the morning glad I see;
    My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

    ANALYSIS
    This meditation on the nature of wrath offers two ways of dealing with on an
    offence. When the speaker is angry with his friend, he told the friend of it and his
    “wrath did end.” However, when he was angry with his enemy, he kept the anger
    hidden, allowing it to grow. His wrath, which is watered “in fears” and sunned
    ‘with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles,” grows into the poison tree of the title.
    The tree bears “an apple bright” that the speaker’s enemy desires; the greedy
    enemy takes the fruit, even though he knows it belongs to the speaker, and eats it.
    The next morning the speaker is glad to see his “foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.”
    "The Poison Tree" consists of four sets of rhyming couplets. Each stanza continues
    into the next, giving the poem a hurried, almost furtive tone that matches the
    secretive deeds done in darkness of the poem's content.
    The obvious moral of this poem is that hidden wrath becomes more dangerous
    behind the deceit that hides it from its object. Possibly, the “Friend” mentioned in
    the first stanza is a friend simply because the speaker respects him enough to voice
    his anger face to face, whereas the “enemy” may be a potential friend who remains
    an enemy because the speaker keeps his wrath secret and nurtures it. There is a
    touch of irony, however, in that the poem ends with the speaker’s gladness over his
    foe’s death by poison. No final line refutes the secret nurturing of wrath, and in
    fact, the poem may be read as a guide for taking vengeance upon one’s enemies.
    Some critics suggest that the apple symbolizes Blake’s creative work, which
    another of his contemporaries may have stolen and used as his own. If so, it
    appears the theft of Blake’s intellectual property ended badly for the thief (or at
    least Blake hopes it will).

    You might also like